Samak-e Ayyar

SAMAK-E ʿAYYĀR (Persian: سمک عیار‎) is an old Iranian folklore story transmitted orally and written down probably around 12 century.[1]

The story belongs to the Persian literary genre of popular romance.[2] It narrates the adventures of the prince Khorshid-shāh who is born after a long time prayers of his old father, Marzbān-shāh. At the age of sixteen, Khorshid-shāh, the prince, falls in love with Mah-pari, the princess of Chin(China), and that is the starting point of his journey to join his beloved. Meanwhile, he receives help from a group of “Knight errant” or ʿayyārān who are followers of javānmardī' [3] or Fotowwa principles. Samak, the main protagonist of the story is an ʿayyār[4] who becomes the best friend of the young prince and helps him to fulfill his adventures. The story ends unfinished as the only extant version of this romance which is an illustrated manuscript preserved in three volumes (Ouseley 379, 380, 381) in the Bodleian library in Oxford is not completed. Moreover, the manuscript has no colophon; therefore, we have no information about patron and scribe of the book; also there is not any reliable note indicating the exact date and place of the codex's creation. The romance was originally told by a professional storyteller. According to the story's text, Farāmaz ibn Khodādād ibn Kātib Arrajānī, is the compiler and the story's second narrator who heard it from a certain Ṣadaqa b. Abi’l-Qāsem Shīrāzī, the first narrator of the story. The story contains lots of old, ancient Iranian names like, Khordasb Shido, Hormozkil, Shāhak, Gilsavār, Mehrooye, Zarand. The existence of lots of Turkish names implies that it is not written down before Seljuq period, meanwhile, the layout, the style of illustrations and the existence of some famous verses indicate that it is created during the first half of fourteenth century. The text was edited and published for the first time by Parviz Nātel Khānlari during 1347/1968 and 1353/1974. It is published in five volumes by Sokhan, and later by Āgāh publishing center in Iran. The book of Samak-e ʿayyār is a brilliant source of cultural and social information of medieval Iran and followed the structure of stories which belong to the oral tradition.[5]

The manuscript has 80 illustrations; the images are particularly interesting as their artists – in contrast to the illustrators of other texts like the Shāhnāme (The Book of the kings) – had no previous example to imitate for the scenes.[6] It was in 1936, that Ivan Shchukin categorized the images of the manuscript as belonging to the Inju style[7], an idea which is still generally accepted.